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08.06.2025

Starting your day with tulsi prepares your immune system for virus attack

If you take a capsule with an extract of tulsi - Latin name: Ocimum sanctum - every day, your immune system is better prepared to ward off an attack by viruses and other pathogens. This is shown by a small trial from India, which was published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in 2011.

Study
Physiologists from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences gave 22 healthy subjects a capsule containing 300 milligrams of alcohol-based tulsi extract every day for 4 weeks. The subjects took their capsule in the morning on an empty stomach.

On another occasion, the subjects took a placebo.

Just before the supplementation began and on the last day of the supplementation, the researchers analyzed the subjects' blood.

Results
Tulsi supplementation increased the release of interferon-gamma by cells in the blood from 85 to 120 picograms per milliliter of blood. This represents an increase of 41 percent.

The release of interleukin-4 also increased with tulsi supplementation.

At the same time, the researchers found a shift in the composition of the immune cells through supplementation with tulsi. They saw, among other things, that the percentage of Natural Killer cells in the blood of the test subjects increased by 4 points from 12 to 16 percent. This increase amounts to 33 percent.

Conclusion
The researchers waste few words on the possible consequences of the shifts through supplementation - so we, unhindered by much knowledge, do just that.

Natural Killer cells are the underestimated shock troops of the immune system. They attack pathogens without needing too many stimuli to do so. Especially when a virus is circulating that strikes in a slightly different form each time, this part of the immune system can be surprisingly effective.

Interferon-gamma is a cytokine that cells release when pathogens try to invade. Interferon-gamma is more or less the first alarm signal that the immune system sounds - and the first immune cells to respond to it are the Natural Killer cells.

All in all, supplementation with tulsi could well reduce the chance of viral infections. Interesting stuff to stack with mushrooms, maca and spirulina.

Source:
J Ethnopharmacol. 2011 Jul 14;136(3):452-6.

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